Tag: GDP

Xi Jinping will address the World Economic Forum on Tuesday in Davos, the first time a Chinese leader has done so.
Chinese state media tells us he will speak strongly in favor of globalization. That message will be difficult to accept, however, as his country is closing off its market,...

Trump's pick for commerce secretary has a track record of saving American jobs. Whether he can bring many back to the Rust Belt remains to be seen.
A decade ago, cheap Chinese cloth was hammering American textile makers. Companies like Burlington Industries and Cone Mills, two big U.S. makers of...

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire...

The United States’ relationship with Iran tops the list of foreign policy issues that will confront President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office in January. Like many of the other Republican presidential candidates, Trump was an early and staunch opponent of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the...

James Rickards is the Editor of Strategic Intelligence, a financial newsletter, and Director of The James Rickards Project, an inquiry into the complex dynamics of geopolitics + global capital. He is the author of The New Case for Gold (April 2016), and two New York Times best sellers, The...

With every major financial recovery since the second World War beginning in a place of greater debt than the one before it, how could we not have foreseen the financial crisis of 2008? In this episode of Meet the Renegades, economics professor and author, Michael Hudson argues we did.
How could...

Today, Friday 14 October 2016, 11:00am CEST, WikiLeaks releases new secret documents from the controversial Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) currently being negotiated by the US, EU and 22 other countries that account for over 2/3rds of global GDP.
The release is just a few days ahead of the next...

EU finance ministers to release €2.8bn after Athens government carried out required reforms relating to privatising state assets, tax and pensions.
Greece is on track to receive €2.8bn (£2.5bn) from its eurozone creditors by the end of October, after an agreement on Monday on the latest instalment of its multibillion-euro...

The third leg of the world's intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history.
It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal...

China has failed to curb excesses in its credit system and faces mounting risks of a full-blown banking crisis, according to early warning indicators released by the world’s top financial watchdog.
A key gauge of credit vulnerability is now three times over the danger threshold and has continued to deteriorate, despite pledges by Chinese...

In this week’s podcast, Michael Pento, fund manager and author of The Coming Bond Bubble Collapse, explains how the United States is fast approaching the end stage of the biggest asset bubble in history. He describes how the bursting of this bubble will cause a massive interest rate shock that...

Three months ago, we presented an analysis which showed something disturbing: according to Deutsche, the "current business cycle is already the fourth longest in the post- WWII period, and the corporate debt-to-GDP ratio suggests that imbalances are building", and that worse, as a result of soaring corporate debt and...

Saudi Arabia is intensifying efforts to shrink the highest budget deficit among the world’s biggest 20 economies, aiming to cancel more than $20 billion of projects and slash ministry budgets by a quarter, people familiar with the matter said.
The government is reviewing thousands of projects valued at about 260...

What exactly is going on in the People's Republic? Even with good data, experts can't agree.
On August 12, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued its annual report card on China's economy and gave the country mixed grades, finding that its “economic transition will continue to be complex, challenging, and...

The escalating anti-Russian rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign comes in the midst of a major push by military contractors to position Moscow as a potent enemy that must be countered with a drastic increase in military spending by NATO countries.
Weapon makers have told investors that they are relying on tensions...

In this extract from his new book, the Nobel prize-winning economist argues that if the euro is not radically rethought, Europe could be condemned to decades of broken dreams.
Europe, the source of the Enlightenment, the birthplace of modern science, is in crisis. This part of the world, which hosted...

Following the Q2 GDP print, the slowing in aggregate weekly hours suggested a modest pickup QoQ in non-farm productivity, but it plunged 0.6% - dramatically missing the +0.4% exp in this preliminary Q2 report. This is the 3rd quarterly decline in a row - the first time that has...

The bond market should be concerned about stock buybacks, but not because of their bullish effect on share prices. Instead, bondholders should be anxious about where the cash to pay for them comes from. It isn’t widely appreciated that the money has been borrowed in the credit markets, and...

The strength of the U.S. dollar is boosting gold sales in China and Russia as the two countries bulk up their official reserves with bullion. Returns on European currencies have continued to creep lower, with the Euro causing particular concern for global investors. With weaker than expected economic data...

After more than two years of worsening economic growth and an economy struggling with 10.5% central bank interest rates that make new credit to spur growth virtually impossible, Russian President Vladimir Putin has finally broken an internal factional standoff. On July 25 he mandated that an economic group called...

The dollar is set to fall 5 percent in the next few months, the Federal Reserve isn’t raising interest rates anytime soon and U.S. economic data is only going to get worse.
That’s what Morgan Stanley chief global currency strategist Hans Redeker told clients in a note published Thursday, citing...

The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory.
This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF's...

After years of broken promises and deepening paranoia, the Turkish president earned his comeuppance.
This is not what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meant when he said he wanted to transform Turkey. The tanks and gunfire in the streets of Ankara mark the fifth time since 1960 that the Turkish military...

The Japanese economy is sliding into oblivion pulled along by central bank policy. In response, the Japanese people are buying gold.
Economic growth has languished in Japan for nearly two decades despite extraordinary monetary policy including negative interest rates and round after round of stimulus. The government even flirted with...

Sanctions are a critical tool in persuading Russia to change its Ukraine policy. But the West’s overreliance on them risks undercutting their long-term effectiveness.
Sanctions have been a central element of U.S. Russia policy following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the undeclared war in eastern Ukraine. They...

The simple fact is that political uncertainty hurts the economy. And with chaos reigning in the U.K., the road ahead looks bumpy indeed.
When the Brexit vote was still months away, veteran Conservative Party politician Kenneth Clarke predicted that, should David Cameron lose the campaign for Britain to stay within...

In their quest for the Conservative leadership, two rival Eton schoolboys have managed to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union—the first by calling for a referendum in 2013 in order to consolidate his hold over the leadership, and the second by joining the leadership of the...

Credit rater cuts the country’s debt by two notches; ratings outlook is negative.
Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings stripped the U.K. of its pristine triple-A credit rating on Monday, following through on its warning that last week’s vote to leave the European Union threatens the country’s constitutional and economic integrity.
The...

The Moscow-Beijing partnership is stalling. But Xi is winning over the Russian president’s inner circle with favorable loans and sweetheart energy deals.
When Gennady Timchenko — a Russian oligarch and close friend of President Vladimir Putin — was appointed chair of the Russian-Chinese Business Council, an association of more than...

This Thursday — just 48 hours from now — the United Kingdom may soon make the greatest monetary blunder since 1925. That’s when Churchill returned sterling to gold at £4.25 per ounce, the pre-war price. Keynes warned Churchill a much higher price was needed to avoid deflation. Churchill ignored...